The secret of The Room spread until it was a cult phenomenon. For by the time the billboard finally came down in 2008, a true Hollywood miracle had occurred: The Room had become a major cult hit.Īfter failing to secure a wide release after its premiere, The Room became a word-of-mouth fascination around Hollywood, as celebrities like Judd Apatow, Paul Rudd, and Kristen Bell came to its lone monthly midnight showing, organized private viewings, and passed around stories of its mythical filming conditions. This odd and exorbitant expense was one of many examples of apparent wastefulness that would come to fascinate fans of The Room, and help earn Wiseau a reputation as “the Orson Welles of crap.”īut amid all the nonsense associated with The Room - its inexplicable $6 million production budget its awkward, endless sex scenes and vanishing subplots and characters its incoherent dialogue slurred by Wiseau’s thick, nebulously European accent - the everlasting billboard may have in fact evinced stealth marketing savvy. Although The Room played for only two weeks in the summer of 2003, reportedly grossing a mere $1,900 in just two theaters, Wiseau continued to spend a reported $5,000 a week to bankroll the Highland billboard. The man in the now-infamous billboard headshot is Tommy Wiseau, The Room’s writer, producer, director, star, and savant. The Room was, in a way, all of this and much more. Was The Room a noir crime thriller? A gothic horror? A scam ad for a bail bondsman or perhaps a vampire cult LARP? The lack of context surrounding the ominous photo made the ad difficult to parse. Most striking of all was the billboard’s sole photo, a mug-shot-like headshot of a man with a morose scowl and a widow’s peak. It was a mostly black-and-white movie ad, and its only prominent features were the name of its subject, a website, and a phone number to “RSVP” for a showing at one of the film’s only two release locations. The January 10 showing is the latest ironic twist in the journey of a cult film like none other, and the culmination of its creator’s long quest for fame and Hollywood’s respect.įor more than five years during the mid-2000s, an incongruous billboard loomed over Highland Avenue in West Hollywood.

That’s right, The Room is finally about to open, for one day only, in 600 theaters nationwide. The Room may not actually be the worst movie ever made, but it almost certainly holds the distinction for weirdest film trajectory: nearly 15 years from premiere to national release.

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